A broad base of literature has shown that studying how parents feel about their adult children--their affective attitudes--can enrich our understanding of adult psychopathology and its course. For example, parents' critical of emotional overinvolved attitudes are known risk factors for relapse among recovering psychiatric patients (vaughn & Leff, 1976; Hooley, Oriey & Teasdale, 1986). Now there Is early evidence (e.g., Stubbe et al., 1993) that studying affective attitudes may also enrich our understanding of child psychopathology. Expressed emotion (EE) is the most widely used measure of affective attitudes employed in research on the family environment as it relates to psychopathology. Most of this work has been conducted with adult populations. To assess the potential of maternal EE to enrich our understanding of child psychopathology, t proposed research aims to assess its relation to such key child and family variables as (1) symptom pattern (2) maternal psychopathology, (3) parent- child interactions, (4) children's own EE and (5) demographic characteristics, using a clinic-referred sample of children and their mothers. Approximately 350 children and their mothers, drawn from 9 community mental health clinics, will be interviewed for the project. Children ar their mothers will be administered structured diagnostic interviews, standard questionnaires, a standardized speech sample measure of affective attitudes, and will participate in a conflict interaction task. Structural equation modeling will be used to test an overall model of affective attitudes as well as mediators, moderators, and specific components of the model. This research is a preliminary step toward further studies on EE and child outcome In clinical populations.